


Interlude

by sevastre



Category: Neon Genesis Evangelion
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Character Study, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-16
Updated: 2017-11-16
Packaged: 2019-02-03 05:33:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12742017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevastre/pseuds/sevastre
Summary: An examination into the nature of angelic beings, and their fascination with the human condition.





	Interlude

**Author's Note:**

> A brief note before going into this: I wrote this back in 2014, came back to it after sorting through my documents, and liked it enough to post. The only significant change I’ve made is to actually finish the story before publishing.

There is too much time to think after the battles.

Once he's docked the EVA safely inside its port, he shakily collapses on the gangplank and dry heaves, copiously. At some point real things start coming out, not just his fevered, desperate attempts to purge the taste of LCL out of his mouth. The first time, they thought it was a fluke. They've informed him that they are searching for alternatives; something other than the LCL that affects him and him only. No other pilot has such an adverse reaction as he does. The scientist who informs him of this new expenditure on his behalf, while he's rinsing up after another landing, does so with an air of forced politeness and no small measure of scorn. Your running costs are more than the First and Third Children combined, they do not say. Your initial test results would deem you mentally unfit for piloting in any normal given situation, they also do not say. You are a child whose only lease in life is to shoulder the burden of Heaven's wrath, and should you fail, you will take responsibility, is the unsaid statement. But Shinji knows anyways.

As if they know that after Leliel, after the filtration system failed, he has never been able to forget how LCL tastes like blood and raw meat. As if they understand how many times he's felt his chest or neck or arm crushed and ripped apart, and panicking, looked down to see no blood at all, only piloting gear and his own thighs, whole and undamaged, encased in his plugsuit. 

Sometimes, he wakes choking on his own blood (LCL? Sometimes, he can't tell the difference), and realizes that he's bitten his own tongue, or chewed the inside of his lip raw and bloody. Those nights are always the worst. He will pull out the earbuds of his SDAT, cold sweat all along his back and his neck and the undersides of his knees, and curl in upon himself. He doesn't welcome the pain as a distraction, he finds. He just wants it to stop.

These are the nights that he thinks about what it'd be like to fade away into the air and shadows, consumed by his own self hatred, and what it'd be like to never exist again. He has plenty of options to choose from. The towering, labyrinthine structure that cages his EVA in has its lowest gangplank situated a good thirty, maybe fifty, meters from the ground. He doesn't shave, but Asuka keeps a packet of razor refills in their shared supply closet, and he's tried popping one out of its plastic case after waking up screaming at 4:51 AM; tried bringing the cold, tiny sliver of steel to his wrist and feel it bite down, but he can't do it, not by his own hand. He threw away the disassembled razor and ignored Asuka's demanding questions the morning after about why one had gone missing, stupid Shinji, do you know how hard it was to get my hands on these, don't touch my things again! And he had said okay to her, quiet and placating, and she'd stormed off in search of someone else to torment. In the split second it took for her to wheel around sharply on her heels and disappear, he knew exactly what it'd be like to feel her slim throat in his hands.

And then the feeling was gone, as suddenly as it came. He left to visit Kaworu.

They hadn't said much. Kaworu either sensed it, and wisely kept silent as he sat at his desk and leafed through a book, or simply chose not to remark upon it. It felt wrong- sometimes Kaworu felt wrong, because nobody would willingly tolerate Shinji during one of his existential crises, a stupid, frightened little boy afraid of the dark, but Kaworu did. As if nothing he could say or do would drive him away; as if no force could ever compel him to turn him from Shinji. Sometimes he felt something stark and eerie run up his spine whenever Kaworu looked at him-- with an ageless, unyielding love. 

It wasn't until after Kaworu made a gentle, teasing remark and he'd replied with flustered rebellion, checking the clock in the corner and realizing that he was due for a checkup, that he'd figured out what was wrong with Kaworu- he always said the right things, but never directly to Shinji, always at some far-off figure in the distance, even though he was right here…

He didn’t remember walking to the medical block, but then suddenly he was sitting in a sterile white room on one of the most uncomfortable chairs he had ever had the pleasure of sitting on.

After an hour spent answering a psychiatrist's questions in monotone, yes and no and I-don't-knows, he padded down to the vending machines to buy himself a box of juice and a snack, his shoes silent against the polished chrome of the floor. Asuka was leaning against the wall in between the humming machines, a crumpled juice box in her left hand, a chewed-beyond-belief straw clamped in between her teeth. "Shinji," she said from behind him when he'd only nodded in passing, about to turn back to his room to eat. "They're opening up the observation decks to us today. Katsuragi really likes you, lucky brat."

"I’m not lucky," Shinji mutters, inexplicably shy. . 

Her eyes are unreadable underneath brilliant auburn bangs, strewn messily about her forehead. He notes, distantly, that she must have gone in for a physical. Bardiel has never left her the same. She has been worrying her lower lip and fingernails and has taken to occasionally grasping at her eye, as if she can still feel being shredded apart by countless white spears.

He surprises himself-- and her-- by stopping to turn to her. "Do you want to come with me? There's not much up there, I know, but I wanted to see the sky."

She surprises him in turn by accepting his offer. They walk side by side along the corridors in silence. Briefly, Shinji considers inviting Rei, or maybe Kaworu, but there isn't any point in it, so they reach the top deck within minutes. Asuka, who's thrown away the juice box but kept the mangled straw in her mouth, twirls it from side to side as she swipes her entry card along the lock. It admits them with a pneumatic hiss, and Shinji steps inside. 

"Oh," is all he can manage as he sees a blood red sky through the clear reinforced windows, riveted in place with triple layers of steel and other impressive-sounding alloys. He lays his hands on the railing and observes the sprawling ruins of Tokyo. He supposes he should act as if he is guilty, or crushed: instead, he feels an immeasurable sense of hysterical calm upon seeing the effects of his failure. 

"Katsuragi didn't do this because she likes me." Asuka snorts from his side. The terminal is deadly silent, but Shinji knows they've placed at least a few microphones and hidden cameras on the deck. Good. Misat- Katsuragi- can listen to him and what he has to say to her. "She did it because of this-" he touches the DSS choker with one hand, lightly- "and because they want me to see what I've done."

"So what?” Asuka is loud, brash, condescending. "You wanna give in? Katsuragi doesn't matter," she snaps, her arms crossed. Shinji just looks at her, and shrugs a little. "Hey! Look, what I'm telling you has merit, okay? Katsuragi doesn't matter." 

"What does, then?" His curiosity is flat. Asuka catches this and chooses, magnanimously, to ignore it. 

"The only thing that matters is you- you're the one piloting the damn thing. Of course they don’t understand what it’s like, so instead of sulking about it, maybe you should make more of an effort to meet them halfway. Do what you’re supposed to like you care. Stop being such a damn weakling, and maybe you’ll end up in a better place for it.”

He drums his nails against the polished railing. She gives up on waiting for a response and turns away, disgusted. “So you’re just gonna lie there and take it. Like that damn doll.” Her fists are balled up. “I’m--” 

“Sorry,” Shinji interrupts, wanting to placate her before she works herself up even further into a frothing rage. Even after everything, he’s still afraid. Of what, he’s not entirely sure.

That, predictably, fails to stop her. She rounds on him, sneering. Her bangs have fallen over her formerly ruined eye, made whole, but throbbing with the phantom pain of being shredded apart. “You’re going to be sorry your whole life, all the way up until you die, you know that?”

Shinji watches her storm out, clutching again at her eye. He turns back to look at the ruins of his world, dyed with his iniquities, a place where children go kill and be killed-- and does not say a single word for the rest of the day. 

Later that night, he sits at his desk in the dark. His SDAT is powered off and tossed somewhere on his bed, away from his reach, so he can’t block anything out. On and on the silence stretches, fueled by the emptiness in his head and the stark heaviness in his chest. He buries his head in his knees, and wishes for nothing. 

There’s a knock at his door. 

“Shinji,” comes Kaworu’s gentle, lilting voice. “Can I talk to you?” 

“No,” is what he means to say, but “Yes, come in,” is what comes out instead. 

The door opens and closes behind him. Kaworu makes no move to flick on the lights, which Shinji is secretly grateful and disappointed for, because he would have had a reason to snap at him. There’s no actual window, but there is an artificial yellow light that filters in from a slitted, slightly cloudy piece of plastic from the wall. In it, Kaworu looks angelic. Soft. 

He can’t stand it. He can’t take it. He puts his head back into his knees, and as Kaworu comes up behind the chair and puts his hand on his shoulder, he begins to sob. 

“Everything will be alright,” Kaworu says, and his grip turns into a tight embrace from behind, despite Shinji’s starkly, desperately staring eyes and great gasping breaths from the force of his tears. “Everything will be okay.”

"You can't know," Shinji cries. "You can't." 

And Kaworu just holds him tightly, like his arms are the only thing binding him together.


End file.
